Employee Engagement Campaign

Educating and inspiring employees about an innovative new product and quality outcomes.

Client

Actelion

Employees

2,500

Snapshot

Actelion is a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative drugs for diseases with significant unmet medical needs. The company was preparing for the launch of a new drug called Uptravi, a treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) that delays disease progression and reduces the risk of hospitalization. Uptravi was on the heels of receiving FDA approval, for which the company wanted to celebrate. To help drive awareness of Uptravi and the innovations behind it, Actelion turned to us, Vignette, to create an internal campaign to educate employees on PAH and drive engagement and excitement around Uptravi and Actelion as an innovative leader in their space.

Immersing Ourselves in Actelion

Using a workshop format facilitated by Vignette, we began with Actelion immersing our team into the company, learning all we could about:

Actelion’s culture: Actelion’s internal communications leadership team onboarded our team to better understand their culture—how they think, work and play. We learned that the Actelion culture was competitive, and employees liked to work hard and have fun. We analyzed the types of communications channels and vehicles that have been most effective.

Product knowledge: We also needed a quick education on the disease and the treatment. The Uptravi product team members immersed our team into a technical discussion about PAH, Uptravi and recent outcomes. We also explored multiple perspectives on why Actelion employees should care about Uptravi’s upcoming release.

Employee audience profiles: We closely examined the employee audience to identify nuances between age, generation, roles and responsibilities. This enabled us to segment and plan for targeted content.

Measures of success: We guided Actelion’s internal communications leadership through discussions to understand what the campaign must communicate, what actions they wanted employees to take, and ultimately what would define success.

Resources and constraints: We identified constraints and ways to work around them, including regulatory and compliance review requirements, limited access to enhance the intranet experience, use of global internal resources, limited existing source material, and limited channels, tools, and technology.

Thematic Concept, Key Message Points, and Style Guide

From these insights, we developed a campaign theme, explored new communication channels, created a messaging platform, and produced a variety creative elements to engage the workforce around a common theme. Together with the Uptravi product team, we created “More is Possible” as the campaign theme to communicate the mission of the company and its overall outlook on its culture, while also communicating success is always within reach. To develop our message strategy we worked through key message points and their hierarchy to align with Actelion’s objectives. This document acted as a guide to develop campaign content. In parallel, we developed an employer branded style guide to explore and align the campaign’s brand identity, from colors and fonts to graphic styles and imagery direction.

Channels, Tactics, and Vehicles

The core campaign tactics were designed to provide both education and inspiration to employees, connecting them more closely to the innovation behind Uptravi and Actelion’s ability to provide quality outcomes. The channels, tactics, and vehicles we used throughout the campaign included:

Microsite: A responsively designed microsite acted as the hub for all campaign communications, providing more information about PAH and Uptravi as well as an event calendar with notifications.

Gamification: As a core driver behind the campaign, we developed a fun, engaging gamification experience including an interactive quiz released weekly over ten weeks with weekly winners and prizes. The site also included a leaderboard feature to drive healthy competition within the walls of Actelion and encourage employees to come back to the site to see weekly results. All gamification elements were accessible via the microsite.

Email: We wrote and designed several emails to communicate campaign information, notification of upcoming events and announcement of weekly winners. The cadence of emails was aligned to an editorial calendar we developed, which guided timing and follow-up. Each email template was designed to keep content short and visually impactful.

Intranet: We designed a set of intranet homepage ad units to promote the campaign and drive activation.

Events: Together, we produced a constant stream of events to bring people together to learn and engage. The first event was a kickoff event to announce the campaign and all it would involve over the next few months. Our mix included larger employee events such as PAH Awareness Month activities and fundraisers; as well as smaller engagement opportunities such as town halls with patients and medical experts, and a discussion with the Uptravi product team. Our final celebration event to commemorate the drug’s FDA approval featured food, entertainment, and a gameshow-like experience to celebrate the weekly winners of the quiz along with the grand finale winner.

Workplace Disruptions: We designed campaign branded clings that were installed on walls, windows, floors, and stairs around the office. We also developed short-form branded content to be displayed as environmental signage and on all digital displays in the lobby, bistro and in other high-traffic areas throughout the building.

The Outcome

The “More Is Possible” campaign achieved its measures of success. Employees across the company gained a much better understanding of the impact of Actelion’s innovations on the traditionally underserved PAH community. The campaign reminded employees of their common purpose and generated positive feedback through post-campaign surveys.

We know one thing for sure. We’re only as good as the talent on our team. That’s why we take finding great people so seriously. If working in a fast-paced, team-based culture, and being creative all the time is who you are—reach out. We want to meet you!

Tell us about your projects, task us with solving a problem, or ask us to help you plan the future of your brand communications. We’d be delighted to show you how far we can engage your employees to drive your business.

Tell us about your projects, task us with solving a problem, or ask us to help you plan the future of your brand communications. We’d be delighted to show you how far we can engage your employees to drive your business.